Walt takes no comfort reminiscing about his youth. Tales of simpler times and way back when settle like pits in his stomach. For those with nothing to hide, perhaps long-ago decades truly were simpler. But for those free only in shadow, secretly living beyond acceptable societal standards, those memories breed only misery.

His grandchildren bring him pictures they find in his wife’s “treasure” boxes. They shove crinkled black and white images in his face and ask him questions about “olden days”. Each one slices open an unhealed wound, a shattered dream, a life dismantled. When he’s on the edge of tears, he picks up a newspaper and pretends to read. Walt’s wife steps in, nudging the children away from his recliner. Grandpa is old, she tells them, his hearing isn’t what it used to be. Everyone accepts this explanation and leaves him to wallow in his grief.

Walt loved his sweet but oblivious wife when they married. Not in the way he should have, but enough to make it work, he thought. She was plain but pretty, and asked so little, and smiled so freely. When he was content to sit in silence, she never pressed him for conversation. She traced the lines of his hands with gentle fingers, and her skin carried the subtle memory of lilacs and Nivea cream. She was everything he should want. Besides, it would quell the gossip in town.

Keeps to himself.

No friends.

Never looks twice at women.

Maybe he’s one of them.

They’d married quietly, with a subtle luncheon afterward. Cheesecake for dessert, because it was her favorite. No music or dancing. Only light laughter. Her in a simple, white suit. Him in his Sunday Best and a new tie.

She’d wanted only two children, but hadn’t expected them immediately. She was content with their quiet life, for now, and Walt told himself he could—would—do this.

Then he met a man who grinned at him in that knowing way, and they’d both nearly cried.

When they’d touched for the first time, Walt stepped out of his forced delusion, finally understanding the forces of love and desire.

He would leave his dull and draining marriage. She was pretty enough. Still so young. She could start again. Divorce wouldn’t be the end of her. But staying might be the end of Walt.

They’d planned to run away to Alaska. The ends of the earth, where the only prying eyes are those of the midnight sun. Somewhere people lived and died off the land, by their own efforts, too concerned with survival to bother with gossip. Somewhere they might lie under a full-bellied winter moon, fearful only of the elements, not exposed secrets.

They saved every spare penny. Stockpiled supplies and fuel in a rundown shack, significant only to them.

Ronny. That was his name. Walt never wrote it in a letter, or said it aloud to his wife or a friend. He tucked it safely away for himself, and spoke it only when Ronny’s gentle eyes and rugged hands found Walt in the darkness of their private nighttime paradise, where euphoria replaced the loneliness and longing of day.

Walt’s young granddaughter shoves a once glossy photo at him.

“Grampa! Look at that huge tree! And that ladder! It’s so high; I didn’t know they made ladders that high!”

“They don’t anymore,” he answers. “They’re safer now.”

His son comes up, takes the picture from Walt’s limp hand. He doesn’t notice the despondency in his father’s face. Or maybe he doesn’t care.

“That’s the old Miller house, isn’t it?” the son asks. “I don’t remember that tree.”

“You wouldn’t,” Walt answers. “They took it down before you were born.”

The son holds the picture so his daughter can see. Points. Whispers.

“See those men hanging from the branches? Cutting them down?”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” she asks.

“Smart girl,” Walt says.

“They knew what they were doing, I’m sure,” the son says.

“They were tryin’ to make a livin’. Doesn’t mean it was safe.”

Walt’s wife joins the conversation, bringing the picture to her chest.

“Oh, my. I forgot I kept this. Maybe it was in poor taste. So tragic.”

Walt coughs, trying to expel the ache in his chest. The tears that want to pool behind his eyes, but know they don’t belong. Not in this life.

“I took it just hours before it happened,” she says. “I felt guilty afterward, knowing I was so happy on a day when others lost everything.”

Walt hadn’t been notified. Who would have known to tell him? He just knew when he heard sirens whine in the distance, and part of him died.

Ronny had taken every possible job in order to fund their getaway.

“It’s too dangerous,” Walt had told him. “Don’t risk it.”

“One last gig,” Ronny had promised. “Then we’ll leave this place. Together.”

Then everything went wrong, and news poured through town.

Horrible accident.

Died so young.

His whole life ahead of him.

Walt shuffled home, slowly, detached from his body. His heart screaming, his mind spiraling.

Dreams shattered. Lives dismantled. Limbs crushed. Ronny dead.

Walt was two steps in the door when his wife wrapped her arms around him.

“So sad what happened at the Miller’s today. Did you know him?”

He hadn’t answered. Just stared into the empty void where a shiny dream had lived only hours before.

“I had a doctor’s appointment today,” she’d whispered, a giddy smile plastered on her mauve lips. “I have the best news.”

– Genalea Barker